It’ll have 73 miles of trails, a 1,000-acre golf course, fields, playgrounds and river access. There will also be a nature center for kids and horse stables.

Dubbed Trinity River Park, the land serves a vital function, too, by doubling as a shock absorber for the floods that plague the region. Naturally, not everyone sees it that way, and many think that the investment — made by a billionaire whose fortune was built polluting the earth — will be washed away in a flood.

That criticism sort of misses the mark, though. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, it was noted that Louisiana’s wetlands, which had been eroding for decades, would’ve shouldered much of the surge that breached the levees. Furthermore, Michael Van Valkenburgh, the architect, has designed the park so that it will “transform natural disaster into a breathtaking spectacle.”

If nothing more, that’s an improvement on the public spectacle they seem to be.